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12.06.05
Changing
Faces Of Search Marketing
 By
Jim Hedger
A year of unprecedented change in the search engine landscape and online business
environment has forced many SEOs and SEMs to alter and, in some cases, drastically
rethink the services they offer and the techniques they use.
For some SEOs, the changes represent a world of opportunities to expand their
services and experiment with emerging techniques. For others, the changes in the
search world have hit with the repetition and intensity of a series of destructive
environmental disasters. Before getting into the changes to services and techniques,
a quick look at how the search marketing sector has changed is in order.
To begin with, I need to stress that a news time deadline and word limit of 2000
or less permits only a very general overview of this expansive industry. There
are exceptional SEO and SEM practitioners working far beyond the fringes of the
mainstream SEM world. The growing numbers of SEOs employed by global corporations
are an example of an exceptional group outside the typical small or micro-business
SEM shop model. Similarly, traditional advertising firms have started to understand
the importance of search marketing and are hiring or sub-contracting their own
in-house search marketing teams. Regardless of who works for or with whom, or
who has what resources to work with, the same general factors affect the products
of our toilsome tinkering.
As the search marketing industry matures the knowledge base that supports it grows
rapidly. The numbers of practitioners grows every year as well with thousands
of new SEMs annually entering the field. The field they enter is already well
populated with established firms, some quite large and some much smaller. Fortunately,
there is more than enough work for the sector to continue expanding. Very few
SEM shops went out of business for lack of clients this year.
It is important to know how SEMs tend to make their money before considering how
search industry changes affect the SEM sector. The two extremities of the professional
SEO/SEM practitioner world are those who do it for their own online ventures and
those who work for outside clients. The vast majority of SEM practitioners are
found somewhere in between those two extremes with the bulk tending towards the
latter. There is however, an apparent correlation between the choice of SEO tactics
and the spot on the spectrum of a practitioner or specific project.
Those working on their own web properties exclusively tend to see revenues from
participation in affiliate programs or paid-ad distribution programs offered by
Yahoo and Google. SEMs who take outside clients tend to see revenues from service
fees and commissions. Ultimately, for small business SEO and SEM shops, financial
planning and scheduled money management are the essential skill sets that bridge
the gap between success and failure.
SEOs and SEMs who achieved most of their revenues promoting their own website
properties have been the most adversely affected by the changes at Google, Yahoo
and other search giants. This side of the sector established itself in the early
days of the late 90's finding ways to tempt web surfers into affiliate program
sales, gambling industry sites and of course, adult entertainment sites. Until
recently, the "anything-goes" attitude formed around those sectors, and the inability
of the major search engines to keep up with them, allowed self-interest SEOs to
use obvious and highly creative algorithm exploits to get their sites ranked higher.
During and just before the recent Jagger Update at Google, many of these sorts
of sites found themselves virtually unfindable as Google delisted or degraded
their placements. Google took action for a number of reasons, the greatest of
which was the long-term incompatibility of Google's PageRank based algorithms
and the various (and often amazingly intricate) link-based exploits used. To be
honest, incompatibility might be exactly the wrong word. Many of these exploits
were designed specifically to maximize the behaviour of Googlebot but often forgot
about the content to keyword contextual relationships Googlebot is searching for.
Eventually Googlebot started acting like a jilted suitor, especially after reading
about such exploits (or people bragging about them) on various search related
forums.
Frequently, SEOs and SEMs working solely for themselves stray towards what has
been labeled the "black-hat" side of the search marketing sector. Basically, black-hat
SEO is technique that does not follow the stated guidelines posted by the search
engines. As the sites they promoted, for the most part, belonged to them, any
sanctions faced stemming from a violation of search engine guidelines would ultimately
be less severe for them then it would be for SEM practitioners working on someone
else's sites. It is much easier to sluff off damage your actions caused to your
own property than it is damage caused to the property of others.
SEOs and SEMs who work as agents for other businesses tend to be more like traditional
advertising firms in their relationship with and reliance on their clients. Agency
type SEO and SEM shops tend to adhere to a loose and unregulated code-of-conduct
that includes a commitment to following search engine guidelines. For the most
part, this group, and by extension their clients, tended to come out of the Jagger
Updates in fair to fine condition. Those who view the search engine guidelines
as a quasi legal-code are often labeled "white-hats".
Read
the rest of the article.
About the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth
Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the
result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts,
and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement
and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/
Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198 |
